September 1, 1998

Many vision-threatening conditions in infants and small children can be detected by using simple methods in the office, such as Snellen visual acuity testing, corneal light reflex examination and cover-uncover testing. The earlier that amblyopia and strabismus are detected, the…

Functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS) is a minimally invasive procedure used to restore normal function of the paranasal sinuses. It is indicated for use in patients with acute recurrent or chronic rhinosinusitis in whom medical treatment has failed.

Multiple chemical sensitivity is a difficult-to-manage syndrome in which the patient attributes a wide array of symptoms to low-level chemical exposure, but no organic pathology can be identified.

The use of external cephalic version has increased in recent years because of its strong safety record and a success rate of about 65 percent. It is a skill easily acquired by family physicians and should be a routine part of obstetric practice.

Heat illness can be prevented by ensuring adequate hydration and adjusting activity levels based on environmental conditions. Rapid cooling improves the prognosis in patients with heat-related illness.

(Great Britain—The Practitioner, May 1998, p. 384.) Each airline has its own guidelines and regulations concerning patients with health conditions. Many of these regulations are designed to avoid medical problems that are due to low humidity and changes in air pressure that…

Who are the movers and shakers of AFP? While many folks are involved in shaping the content of AFP, the ones who stand in the foreground are AFP's medical editors. Working at various locations throughout the country, AFP's medical editors solicit and edit articles, write…

Selected policy and health issues news briefs from AAFP News Now.

Waiting too long to read tuberculosis skin tests in children may cause up to 10 percent of positive results to be missed. According to a researcher at the Western clinical research meetings, cited in Family Practice News, 450 children up to 18 years of age were given the…

If you don't know what the illness is, then any name will do (with apologies to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll). In this issue of American Family Physician, Magill and Suruda1 use the term “multiple chemical sensitivity” to identify a baffling constellation of…

Because of the old adage that everything comes in threes, SEF is waiting for the third case of a rather unusual condition. SEF delivered a baby boy who had inherited his father's trait of polydactyl of the fingers. SEF had not seen a case since medical school and had never had…

Photo Quiz presents readers with a clinical challenge based on a photograph or other image.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Panel to Define Principles of Therapy of HIV Infection, under the auspices of the NIH Office of AIDS Research and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), has formulated 11 principles for the treatment of human immunodeficiency…

Panelists for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have issued a report recommending a reduction in U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations for methadone maintenance programs. The report, which was prepared at the Consensus Development Conference on treatment for…

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) has published a report on the concurrent use of alcohol and tobacco (Alcohol Alert No. 39, January 1998). The report discusses why alcohol and tobacco are so frequently used together, the risk of cancer from tobacco…

Also Received

The problem of crossed or wandering eyes is called strabismus (say: stra-biz-muss). It's normal for newborn babies to have eyes that cross or wander sometimes, especially when they're tired. However, if you see your child's eyes cross or see one eye wander to the side after…

Before birth, most babies are in a head-down position in the mother's uterus. That's why most babies are born headfirst. Sometimes the part of the baby that is head down is not the head, but the buttocks or the feet. When a baby is in that position before birth, it's called a…

When you get warm, your body sweats to cool itself. As it gets warmer, your body must sweat more. As the sweat on your body evaporates (dries up in the breeze), your body gets cooler. If the weather is hot and also humid, your sweat can't evaporate very well. So, as the…